


A Clawing of Longing

by lodessa



Series: Game of Fixes [3]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: AU From the End of 8x03, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Background Jaime/Brienne, Background Relationships, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Fix-It, Forbidden Love, Happy Ending, Implied Background Dany/Jorah, Jealousy, Jorah Mormont Lives, Love Confessions, Mild References to Sansa's History of Trauma, Resolved Sexual Tension, Rumors, references to past relationships, very mild
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-23
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-18 10:05:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19332352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lodessa/pseuds/lodessa
Summary: Sansa and Jon both find themselves reevaluating their interactions with Daenerys, and realizing that perhaps they are more about their feelings for one another than about the queen.  Is there a chance for them to make it right, or is duty really the death of love?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is the second in a series of AU fix-it fics I am writing in response to season 8, each focused on a different ship but in the same AU timeline. In terms of the overall timeline it is set in, the AU split happens at the end of 8x03 (with Jorah miraculously surviving).
> 
> You absolutely don't need to have read the first two fics in the series for this one to make sense, but the timeline for all three does overlap and they do give Daenerys and Brienne's perspectives and explain what is going on with them (especially Daenerys). 
> 
> Rating reflects currently posted chapter and will increase with updates.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa finds herself softening towards Daenerys, after witnessing her distress over Jorah's near death, but still she can't seem to stop questioning the nature of her relationship with Jon, though she struggles to explain to herself why she's doing it or what she hopes to accomplish.

“I know that you have had your misgivings about her, but will it not give you joy to see your brother married to a woman you believe he loves?”

Love. That’s one word for it, the one she has spoken aloud, but inside her head there are others. 

Sansa follows Brienne’s gaze across the parapets to where Daenerys is walking with the ever so recently mobile once more Ser Jorah Mormont at a snail’s pace she does not seen impatient with. 

“Better not to borrow trouble,” she evades, wishing to admit neither her fears nor her hopes on this matter, owning, “I will admit that Daenerys Targaryen has grown on me, but I also hope I may have misjudged the situation with her and my brother. Let us say no more of it.”

“As you wish, my lady,” Brienne acquiesces, though Sansa can tell she wants to ask more.

She won’t though. She never does.

“A small wedding then” Sansa refocuses back to Brienne’s better news. It will be good to celebrate. “You would not deny me such a thing.”

“I marvel that they still appeal to you, my lady,” Brienne replies, adding, “After everything.”

She does not have to elaborate. Sansa knows what she means. 

“I will not let my past define me,” Sansa insists to herself, as much as to Brienne. “I will not let them take from me my joy of what ought to be a happy occasion.”

She is happy for Brienne, a good loyal woman who seems to bring out good in the Kingslayer, good which no one previously suspected existed, _He loves her and she loves him,_ she recognizes. _How many couples can truly say as much?_

“And you, my lady?” Brienne surprises her by daring to ask, “Will you ever wed again?”

“I do not know, I suppose.” It is hard to imagine, after Ramsay, though Sansa supposes that Winterfell will be in need of alliances and an heir eventually. “I suppose none of us really know what the future holds in store for us.”

“Sansa,” Jon interrupts her train of thought as he walks up behind them, “Ser Brienne, I hear from Lord Tyrion that congratulations are in order.”

“Thank you, my lord,” Brienne says with evident embarrassment and pleasure.

“Sansa, do you think we could take a walk in the Godswood… alone?” Jon asks her with a sense of urgency, before turning back to Brienne, “I promise to watch over her diligently.”

“I don’t see why not,” Sansa agrees, wondering what he wants to talk about. “Go on, Brienne.”

As Jon takes her offered hand and leads her away, she hopes it is not going to be another conversation about how she needs to be nicer to his queen. She is being nicer, isn’t she? Ever since she saw Daenerys sitting over Ser Jorah’s bedside, clearly grief stricken and sick with worry, she has found it easier to see her as a real person.

 _I should be indignant on Jon’s account_ , she considers as he guides her down the stairs, placing his hand against the small of her back ever so carefully. The woman who just a few weeks ago claimed to have come here entirely out of love for him has seemingly no attention to spare for Jon, ever since her wayward Kingsguard very nearly died during the battle with the Night King. 

She’s not, though. She feels a weight lifted, if only a little. Maybe it is that she and Daenerys have finally started to talk, or rather that Daenerys has started to listen to her ideas. 

She’d ask Arya, but Arya is gone on a ship out of White Harbor headed to King’s Landing. Sansa knows that her sister is the best person in Westeros to remove Cersei, but she still wishes she hadn’t gone.

Jon is quiet on the walk to the Godswood. _Whatever he wants to tell me, he’s convinced no one else should hear,_ she recognizes. Perhaps he’s finally learning caution, though that seems unlikely when getting murdered didn’t.

Still, it is nice to simply walk in the daylight, safe here at home with Jon. She feels, for a moment, more like the girl who grew up here than the one who became a woman far from home and amongst foes. It is strange to think now, how she used to discount Jon. Now he feels as much her home as this place.

“There’s no easy way to say this,” he begins and that sense of warmth and comfort evaporates immediately. “So I’m just going to say it. Bran saw something… well Bran saw it and Sam found the records and… father was lying to us all these years, Sansa.”

“Father… lying?” That sounds improbable, if there’s one thing their father, Eddard Stark, didn’t believe in it was lying. Well, really there were many things he didn’t believe in, she has to own, but lying was certainly one of them.

“I know,” Jon says, “It sounded wrong to me too, but he did. He did it to keep a promise he made to his dying sister.”

“Aunt Lyanna?”

“Your aunt Lyanna,” Jon says, which doesn’t make sense because Lyanna was their father’s sister not her mother’s so she’s his aunt too, but then he continues, “I was never his son but hers.”

“But why would he-”

“My father was Rhaegar Targaryen. Think of what they did to Aegon and Rhaenys. Think of what they tried to do to Dany and her brother…”

Daenerys. Suddenly a cold sensation washes over Sansa. _He’s her family now, not mine after all._ That’s what she’s been worried about all this time really, she supposes, losing Jon to **her** when she’s only just barely begun to appreciate him after a childhood spent pretending he wasn’t there.

These last two weeks, she’s been lying to herself, imagining that perhaps Jon could stay here, that Daenerys might leave him to her. If he really is a Targaryen, Daenerys’ bastard nephew instead of Sansa’s bastard brother, there is no way he is going to be left here in peace. A dragon prince for a dragon queen, natural born or no, that has always been the Targaryen custom.

“Does she know?” Sansa finally asks, “Does she know you are her brother’s illegitimate son?”

If she did, that would explain the way she latched onto Jon, despite Sansa’s continued feeling that her heart isn’t truly engaged there. 

“She does,” Jon admits, “I told her right before the battle, but here’s the thing. Apparently Rhaegar formally set aside Elia Martell in secret and married Lyanna Stark.”

“But…” Sansa suddenly understands why Daenerys would have pulled away from Jon, for reasons other than those she had been imagining. “That would give **you** the stronger claim to the Iron Throne.”

“I don’t want it!” Jon nearly seems to cry.

“It doesn’t matter if you want it,” Sansa shakes her head. “You are the rightful heir to the Seven Kingdoms.”

She says it and realizes she doesn’t really want it to be true. Men in their family don’t do well in the South. _I could protect him_ , she considers, but she doesn’t want to go back down to King’s Landing anyway, especially not if she’s going to have to fight Daenerys for every bit of influence with him.

“She’s my queen,” Jon insists. “Sansa, promise me you won’t.”

She hates hearing him call Daenerys that, though he still hasn’t said anything about the rest of it, about Daenerys being more than a queen to him.

“Won’t what?”

“Won’t do exactly what I can tell you are thinking of. I didn’t tell you about this because I wanted you to plan a coup.”

“It’s not a coup, if you are the rightful king. And why did you tell me then?”

She can’t help feeling frustrated. What does Jon want from her? How is she supposed to help him when he won’t tell her what he’s thinking, what he wants?

“I didn’t want a lie between us, Sansa,” he claims with such heartwrenching sincerity, but everyone lies… even father apparently.

“How long have you known?” she demands, unsatisfied.

“Not long. Sam told me right before Jaime Lannister arrived.”

He looks embarrassed and she thinks that he should. He’s had ample opportunity to come clean with her before this, and he waited until now for whatever reason.

“Weeks ago. And I suppose you told Arya at some point before she left.” 

The look of guilt on his face is enough to answer that question. Of course he did. Jon swears he doesn’t hold her behavior towards him when they were children against her and she mostly believes it, but Arya had all those years to bond with him and sometimes she can’t help but feel jealous of the results.

“What am I supposed to say,” Jon entreats, “I wanted to tell you sooner, I just...”

“What? Did **your** queen finally give you permission? Is that it?” 

She doesn’t want to fight with him, but she can’t seem to help it, a trend of late.

“No,” he denies, “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, I just didn’t want to lose that feeling of finally being close to you, of being your brother.”

She wants to tell him that it doesn’t matter who his real parents are, that maybe it makes things easier between them… or simpler, but she shoves down that second thought as soon as it emerges, telling herself she doesn’t know where it came from. Another lie. What is a truth she can offer instead?

“I’ve barely seen you since you returned from the South. You went off to Dragonstone, and your body came back but you didn’t, not really,” she admits, a confession that isn’t about her, not exactly. 

“Sansa…” He reaches out for her but she turns away.

“No. Whatever excuse you are about to make: don’t.”

She’s not certain whether she fears not being able to forgive him more or how easily she could.

“What do you want me to say? Please, don’t be angry with me.”

She makes the mistake of turning back to face him and looking into those sad pleading eyes. She knows that it has never been Jon’s intention to hurt her, no matter how inadvertently successful he has been.

“I’m not angry, Jon… I’m just…”

What is it that she is? Wounded? Disappointed? Betrayed.

“I’m sorry,” he says and she doesn’t pull away this time as he takes her gloved hands in his.

“I know,” she sighs. “I just wish that even once you’d tell me something important first.”

“Has it ever occurred to you,” he says, “That when I think about telling you something, well I want to have practiced it on a less discerning audience first. You’re always so sharp, Sansa, and I end up sounding like a blithering idiot every time. Do you think I like making a fool of myself?”

Sometimes she is grateful that Jon cannot read her feelings, not well at least. This is not one of those times. She doesn’t want to be his adversary but it seems like no matter what she says or does he doesn’t feel supported by her. Even just now, her willingness to fight for him to ascend to the Iron Throne, didn’t read to him as anything other than an argument.

“I’m not trying to tear down, Jon. I’m always trying to help build you up, give you sturdier footing.”

 

 

“Lady Stark,” Jorah moves to stand, as stiff as he must still be.

“Don’t trouble yourself on my account, Ser,” she tells him. “I was just hoping to find the queen here with you.”

“You just missed her, I’m afraid,” he replies, revealing nothing that she doesn’t already know. 

She’d waited, carefully, until she saw Daenerys depart with Tyrion before approaching.

“Would you mind terribly,” she asks, “if I sat and waited for her here?”

“Of course not,” he has no choice but to agree. 

“You must be anxious to go home at last,” she says casually, as though remarking on the weather.

“Home, your ladyship?”

“To Bear Island, of course. It has been so long and no one, now can doubt you have earned the chance to return.”

“If you might forgive an old knight’s sentimentality, it saddens me to think of it now. When last I left, my family was still alive, vital, my house strong though small. Now… we are ended, down to the last cub.”

It is the most interactive she has found him, something beyond the simple courtesies of polite manners. Perhaps she has chosen the right topic.

“Lady Lyanna served my house with honor, like the rest of your kin before her. She will not be forgotten. Surely though, ser, it is not too late for your house. You yet live to carry on your family line.”

“A knight of the Queensguard holds no lands, takes no wife, and fathers no children,” he reminds her.

“Surely, after all you have done for her, after the wounds you have taken protecting her life, the Queen could find it in her heart to release you from such vows. I can see that she cares for you deeply, truly. When she thought she had lost you I first saw that she indeed has a heart that beats. You made sure she lived to ascend to the Iron Throne, and such a deed deserves to be rewarded,” she declares, probing a little more deeply.

“Even if she would,” he shakes his head, “I would never leave her, not by choice, not except in death.”

Sansa has seen the way that Ser Jorah looks at Jon’s queen, at the way she looks at him. She supposes she should not be surprised at this response, especially when talking to someone he must see as a threat to his Khaleesi, as she has caught him calling Daenerys more than once. 

“Your line will end,” she points out. “There will be more more more Mormonts, no more Bears to watch over your isle, to serve the realm.”

“Then let us perish,” he says without hesitation. “I live only to serve Daenerys Stormborn.”

She’s not sure what she had hoped: that he might buckle, might step aside and leave space for Jon, might on the contrary be driven to a paranoia and work to separate Jon from his beloved Dragon Queen. But what she’s found is that he will not fall prey to such casual manipulation.

She wonders truly, if anyone will ever love her that way. There have, perhaps, been men willing to kill for her, but none willing to die for her, to live for her: this quiet unsung sacrifice of anything else they might ever have wished for, something far greater than violent and bloody heroic moments of bravery alone.

“She’s trying, you know, with you,” he says, tearing her out of her own thoughts.

“I had noticed,” she acknowledges. “I’m trying too.”

“My relatives never liked my second wife,” he tells her, “Though to be fair, in that case, they were right about everything they said about her and I should have listened.”

“Everyone seems to think I dislike her,” Sansa recognizes, “But it isn’t like that. You see… I think it is more like when I was a little girl and I loved lemoncakes, absolutely adored them, and you see… if anyone around me so much as implied that they didn’t think lemoncakes were the superior cake to all others… I would get offended, as if someone had affronted my own honor. And I think it is like that with me and your queen, all of you look at her and see with the eyes of those who love what they gaze upon, and my not feeling that same way feels to you like antipathy.”

“You know,” Daenerys surprises Sansa by saying from right behind her, “I too, was rather fond of lemoncakes as a child.”

“Your Grace…” Sansa moves to stand to curtsey.

“Lady Stark,” Daenerys seems amused. Sansa had not anticipated her returning so quickly.

“I’ll make sure to have the cook send up some lemoncakes, now that I know we have that in common,” she stalls, having forgotten what excuse she’d planned to use for her presence here.

“Lady Sansa,” Tyrion saves her without knowing it. “I was just about to seek you out. Will you walk with me?”

“If you will walk in the direction of the kitchens with me,” she replies, careful not to appear over eager to escape. “I realize now I have matters to attend to.”

“I have a proposal to make,” Tyrion announces as they leave Daenerys and Jorah behind, to do whatever it is they spend so much time doing of late. “A political proposal, that is.”

“Is this coming from you, or from your queen?” she asks, though she won’t trust his answer whatever it ends up being.

“A little of both,” he owns. “She’s left me to work out the details with you.”

“Is she afraid that if she negotiates with me directly I’ll outmaneuver her?” she suggests.

“Perhaps. Perhaps she thinks you’ll be more amenable to me than her. Perhaps she just wants to make me feel useful,” he finishes in that wry self deprecating way he has.

“What’s this proposal about then?”

“The future of the seven kingdoms,” he grins.

“Oh, just that?”

“Just that,” he replies, glancing around to see if anyone is approaching from either direction before continuing. “I don’t know what Jon did or didn’t tell you…”

“I know he’s the rightful heir to the Iron Throne, if that’s what you mean,” she tells him bluntly.

“I’m impressed you haven’t said anything about it to the rest,” he remarks, as though he knows how tempted she’s been.

“He doesn’t want me to,” she replies, but there is more to it than that.

Making him king wouldn’t make Jon any more safe. It wouldn’t bring him back to her, to Winterfell.

“And you listened?” he quips.

“For now,” she refuses to give away that she has no intention to put Jon on the Iron Throne, better for Tyrion to worry.

“Did he also tell you that Daenerys… cannot bear children?” Tyrion asks with obvious unease, taking her by surprise.

“Cannot?” she questions, wondering why he would choose to share this information with her, when she could use it against his queen.

“There was an incident with some village which when she was with the Dothraki. She doesn’t like to talk about it, but as far as anyone can tell it is true.”

“How does she plan to handle succession then? Especially if she’s planning to wed her only living relative.”

Why travel all this way to a land she is a foreigner to, if not to reestablish her family dynasty? Why reestablish a dynasty when you can’t pass it on?

“Therein lies the proposition,” Tyrion smiles. “You want northern independence. Daenerys wants to rule all seven kingdoms. But she cannot produce an heir, at least not in the traditional way.”

“So what? She’s going to make one of us her heir?” 

Jon? But then how would she explain the choice without opening herself up to the same challenge she would try to quash by holding onto him?

“Not exactly,” Tyrion says. “Daenerys has said for a long time that she wants to break the wheel, the cycle of oppression and violence surrounding the struggles of the powerful to win dominion over one another. What if Westeros tried something new? Daenerys wants to reunite us, but what if she was our last monarch, and instead we formed a ruling body, governed by one representative from each of the realms, to make decisions on that level, while leaving everything that doesn’t have to be for the high lords and ladies to decide for each of their kingdoms?”

“After her,” she notes. Daenerys is young. Promises for the future are so often not really promises at all, Sansa knows.

“Yes. Such a system would take time to set up, and the kingdom is fractured and needs to be brought back together,” Tyrion points out, and she has to admit that much is true.

“How can I trust her? What if this is a ruse?” she can’t help asking, though she doesn’t have a better solution.

“Daenerys didn’t grow up in a court. She doesn’t think like that,” he insists and she can’t help thinking, _No, you don’t think like that._

“Forgive me if I don’t trust your assessment of her intentions, after how miserably you judged your sister’s.”

“I deserved that,” Tyrion admits. “Well how about this then… you know the truth about Jon’s parentage, so if suddenly Daenerys names a successor or turns up pregnant, you can always reveal that and turn her kingdom upside down. The North was willing to follow him before, and I have no doubt that the Vale and the Riverlands would turn their heads in whatever direction you choose to direct them.”

“What’s to stop someone else from taking the throne anyway?” she thinks. 

It is all very well to say they won’t have another monarch after Daenerys, but there will always be ambitious people who want to sit on the throne.

“Each of the lords paramount has a vested interest in not letting anyone do so. Everyone wins with this new system so why should any of you risk challenging it?” 

Dorne, she imagines, would be pleased. So too, would the North. But what of the Reach, the Stormlands, the Westerlands, the Riverlands... 

“You said this was a proposal… What do I have to do in this scenario?”

“Support Daenerys as Lady of Winterfell. Keep the truth about Jon Snow a secret.”

A silken muzzle then. Jon must have told Daenerys she knew, despite Tyrion initially acting as though he wasn’t sure. Still, it is not the worst price she could pay, especially if-

“And Jon?” she can’t help asking.

“That’s between him and the queen, I suppose. Or him and you,” Tyrion adds with a wink.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she demands.

“If you’ll pardon my saying so, Lady Sansa, but you and Lord Snow are rather emphatically protective of one another. On Dragonstone he was about ready to rip out my throat for so much as uttering your name.”

“I didn’t- I never- I’ve always been honest with those who asked about our so called marriage, how you were kind to me and did not...”

She knows most men would not have been as kind, in Tyrion’s situation. She knew that at the time and since then she’s learned firsthand just how much more miserable it could have been. She doesn’t want him to think she’s been trying to turn Jon against him.

“I wasn’t suggesting you’d maligned my already disreputable name,” Tyrion seems almost amused. “It’s been my observation that Jon Snow’s first instinct when it comes to you, my dear, is to attack immediately, rather violently, before ascertaining if someone is actually a threat to you first.”

Littlefinger had complained much the same, that Jon had threatened him with violence.

“Do you reckon that’s the wolf instinct or the dragon?” she deflects.

“Hard to say,” Tyrion owns, “In my experience, both can be impulsive, though that’s never been you. No, you’ve always been much more circumspect, much more intentional.”

 _He’s asking me to bring Jon into line, to make sure he behaves in the role they want him to play._ But Sansa wasn’t sure she wanted to, wasn’t sure it was safe to ask him to sheath his claws and unbare his teeth.

“You know what they did to my wolf,” she says, “Lady did nothing but be trusting and well mannered and they killed her. Forgive me if I refuse to make that same mistake.”

“No one here is trying to kill you, or your brother- your cousin, Jon Snow,” Tyrion tries to reassure her

“So you say,” she shakes her head. 

 

 

“You never answered me, you know,” Sansa tells Jon, as they sit together at the wedding feast for Sers Jaime and Brienne.

It’s been a fortnight since that day in the Godswood when he revealed the truth to her, that he wasn’t her bastard half brother after all. It’s been three times that since Jon arrived back at Winterfell with the Dragon Queen, having bent the knee. 

“About what?” he looks confused, though that is not uncommon for him.

“When I asked you whether you bent the knee to save the North or because you love her?”

“Does it matter?” he doesn’t answer, though at least he doesn’t pretend not to know what she’s talking about.

“It does to me,” she admits, feeling more open than usual. Perhaps it’s the extra cup or wine, or maybe it is the result of watching just how incandescently happy the Brienne and Jaime are, or it might even be the conversation she and Brienne had before the wedding about Daenerys’ response to this union.

“I did it because she saved my life,” he confesses, “Because she was willing to risk her life for me, for us.”

Sansa thinks back to how long she resisting her own knowledge that Littlefinger was untrustworthy and dangerous. He always had been, and yet he’d protected her, killed for her, lied for her. He’d taught her so many things, some intentional and some that were not. He had been a monster, but she’d wanted to believe he would never turn his fangs in her direction. 

She can believe that Jon felt loyalty to the woman who saved his life. _I saved his life_ a small part of her thinks, but she knows it isn’t the same, strategy is not the same as the visceral experience of someone plucking you from danger.

He may have answered her question, but it only makes Sansa realize that what she wants to know isn’t exactly what she asked.

“Do you love her?” 

“Why?” he asks, as if it is a strange question, as if there’s no reason it should matter to her.

“I want to know,” she tells him, though she couldn’t say exactly why she wants to so much, only that she does.

“I care for Daenerys. I believe in her,” he once again doesn’t actually answer.

“Are you in love with her, though?” she presses, though each time she asks the pit of her stomach seems to twist into knots.

_How can I help Jon get what he wants, if I don’t know what that really is? He says he doesn’t want to be king, but does he want the queen?_

“It doesn’t matter,” Jon glances away, seeming embarrassed, “I’m bound to her by honor, by necessity now. I promised to wed her if she wished it.”

“And does she wish it?” she can’t stop herself from demanding. 

“She hasn’t decided yet, or rather she hasn’t told me her decision,” Jon tells her and Sansa finds herself outraged once more at Daenerys, though she isn’t sure whether it is for not immediately embracing Jon’s offer or for not letting him go immediately.

 _I suppose that is because I don’t know which he wants,_ she realizes. _He still hasn’t said._

“What do you want her to decide?” she asks more softly now, putting her hand on Jon’s in an attempt at being reassuring.

“Don’t make me say it, Sansa. Please,” his voice is pained, as he turns his face back towards hers, eyes betraying similar suffering.

 _Why won’t he tell me?_ she can’t quite comprehend. Does he truly not trust her? Does he think she means him ill after everything they have been through? Does he think her so uncharitable towards Daenerys, though she’s tried to be otherwise this last month?

“She’s beautiful. The most beautiful woman in the world they say.”

“She is beautiful, but so are you. If I had to say-” he starts but then cuts himself off, leaving Sansa more perplexed than before.

“What?”

“Nevermind,” he looks away, “Ignore me like you usually do.”

She’s about to reply, but then Tarly comes rushing in, huffing and puffing, hurrying directly to Jon and whispering something in his ear.

“A raven from King’s Landing,” Jon leans in to tell her in a hushed voice, “Cersei Lannister tumbled from a tall window to her death. King’s Landing is hanging the Targaryen colors… the war is over.”

“Go on,” she tells him, “Go and tell the queen.”

She says nothing about the fact that Daenerys is not here at the feast, that she’s been reclusive of late, alone with Ser Jorah and perhaps Missendei of Naath, or out with her dragons. 

“I’ll be back soon,” he says.

Sansa gazes across the great hall, full of people enjoying themselves and allows herself a moment to enjoy this news. Cersei is dead. 

“I don’t suppose you would tell me what the good news is?” Tyrion asks. She hadn’t noticed him working his way through the crowd.

“I wonder if it will be, for you,” she replies. “You’ve always acted as though you hated your sister, but sometimes I wonder if that was entirely true.”

“News from the capitol, then?”

“She’s dead,” Sansa can’t help smiling. “Cersei fell from a tall window and she’s dead.”

They all are now: Joffrey, Ramsay, Cersei. Everyone who tormented and abused her. Littlefinger too, though he was something different from the other three. _What if that’s the only kind of attachment I can inspire?_ she wonders, _twisted obsession._

“It was only a matter of time,” Tyrion remarks, neither confirming nor denying his feelings on the matter. “I suppose I’d better go warn Jaime. Leave it to Cersei to find a way to overshadow his wedding day from half a continent away.”

They both look across the room to where the happy couple sit, blissfully unaware of the shadow about to be cast over their celebration.

“You don’t have long. Jon should be back with Daenerys soon to make an announcement.”

Sansa can’t help thinking about what Brienne revealed to her earlier in the day about the conversation she’d had, or at least witnessed, with the queen. 

_What is Ser Jorah to her?_ Sansa asks herself, not for the first time. Ever since the battle against the Night King, it has been beyond clear that he is more than just one of many followers to Daenerys Targaryen, but what exactly is something that Sansa is not entirely sure of. The man is old enough to be the queen’s father, but Sansa is not convinced that is the nature of her attachment to him, not in this last month. 

It is easy enough to perceive that Jorah loves Daenerys, not only with the chaste devotion of a knight and tender affection that might have befit a kinsman but also with the passion of a man. Half a dozen songs spring to mind to describe them, but Sansa isn’t sure which is the most apt; because, Daenerys is more difficult to predict. Is Ser Jorah the knight who pines hopelessly for a liege lady whose heart lies elsewhere as well as her honor? Is he a love she cannot and will not ever indulge? Or is this one of those tales where the queen does fall into a forbidden tryst? Sansa cannot imagine Daenerys choosing anyone over her own quest for dominion, so she discards those variants without consideration.

 _Life is not a song,_ she finds herself reciting, discovering with surprise that she has stumbled into thinking of it as such for the first time in a long while.

 _I’m trying to sort it out for Jon,_ she justifies to herself. _He’s my family, and that’s what families do isn’t it? We look after one another._ Though Jon won’t even tell her if he loves Daenerys, so perhaps she’s better off not meddling.

Jon returns with Daenerys, who indeed has Jorah in tow, pulling Sansa from her thoughts. As the room quiets, she spares a glance in Jaime and Brienne’s direction and sees that Tyrion has rejoined them. She can also tell when he delivers the news, the shock on both of their faces makes it evident, though Brienne seems to take charge, pulling Jaime away towards the exit.

“My people,” Daenerys says, “I bring joyous news. All of you fought hard during the battle with the Night King, all of you lost people who were dear to you, and I know that it has weighed heavy on all of our hearts the thought of having to travel south to fight the Golden Company and Lannister forces for King’s Landing. Worry no longer. Cersei Lannister has fallen and the capitol has once more rejoined the rest of the Seven Kingdoms. The war is over.”

 _She’s good,_ Sansa recognizes. Instead of making this about herself, Daenerys had framed the announcement in terms of how it would affect those who were listening. Not all of them wanted to see the Dragon Queen on the Iron Throne, but every last man, woman, and child wanted peace and rest, a respite from battles and death.

She watches her, as the celebration resumes, noting that for all that Daenerys has told Sansa she loves Jon, for all that she’s facing towards him, there is something about the way she leans close to Ser Jorah, the way he face lights up when she glances back at him.

 _I’m not imagining it,_ Sansa is certain now.

Jon doesn’t seem to notice, or if he does it doesn’t bother him. He glances over at her and she feels her face flush, though she knows he cannot read her mind. 

If only he could stay here at Winterfell, with her. She realizes that’s what she really wants. Jon makes her feel safe, even when she’s angry with him. She trusts Jon. She knows him. It is an idle wish, though. Sansa is not naive enough to think he will be released so, even if Daenerys does not end up choosing to marry him (A marriage that would be born from political necessity. Sansa now realizes that is what has shifted in her feelings about the queen since that conversation they had over an unconscious Jorah’s beside… that’s when part of her knew the truth). He’s too dangerous to her claim, as much has he has no interest in being so. 

It is getting late, and the crowd raucous. _I should go,_ she thinks, watching Daenerys depart, once again escorted by Jorah and not Jon.

“Leaving so soon?” Jon asks, as she stands to do so.

“It is late,” she tells him.

“We never finished our conversation,” he says, “from before Sam arrived with the news.”

“I thought you wanted me to ignore it,” she reminds him.

“Maybe I changed my mind,” he smiles nervously at her.

“Well then.” She lets him draw her aside, out of the hearing of casual listeners and into the hallway, “What were you going to say?”

“If I had to say,” he swallows and looks down, taking both of her hands in his and raising them to his lips. “If I were a simply hedge knight, free from any commitments, I’d name you Queen of Love and Beauty, not Daenerys.”

“That wouldn’t be very politic.”

“No,” he agrees, “It wouldn’t. It is the truth though.” 

He holds her gaze for a moment, lips parted, eyes wide, and she thinks, _Oh_. Jon isn’t her brother, not really, and he isn’t being diplomatic here or kind. This is the confession he didn’t want to give, and yet now he has.

“Hand me your knife,” she tells him, which seems to confuse him but he does it anyway. She’s not exactly sure what impells her, as she twists a lock of her hair into a circle and cuts it free of the rest. 

“A favor?” he asks, as she hands both to him.

“I’m a little short on ribbons,” she confirms without exactly saying as much.

“I rather think I prefer the old ways,” he smiles and presses the lock of hair she’s given him to his lips. Her heart catches in her throat and just as suddenly and surely as she knew his meaning just now, she discovers her own.

It doesn’t change anything. Jon has promised himself to Daenerys, one way or another. He might be willing to forsake that like a character out of a tale, but she cannot be. Too many people have died for this peace. 

Perhaps life is a song after all, just not a happy one.

And yet, at least now she understands herself. She reaches out and touches Jon’s cheek.

“Jon…” she breathes, letting herself see him again for the first time in she isn’t sure how long, as though a fog has lifted from her eyes.

“I never should have left Winterfell,” he tells her. “I had no business going to Dragonstone.”

“If you had not, we would not have had the numbers to face the Night King.”

“And he would not have had a dragon, or a horde of Dothraki to raise in the middle of the battle.”

 _Sometimes,_ Brienne had told her, _I don’t know whether I want to kiss or strangle him. But that’s love I suppose, being as aware of someone’s flaws as their virtues and not having the prior erase the latter in your heart._

She knows which one she wants to do right now, but she also knows it would be unwise.

“Goodnight, cousin,” she tells him regretfully instead.

“Goodnight, my lady,” he answers.

He doesn’t try to stop her as she walks away, and for that she is thankful. It is hard enough as it is. 

_I wasn’t worried about him, after all. Or at least, I wasn’t worried only about him._

How clear it seems now, that her jealous protectiveness when it comes to Jon has been about her desire to have him to herself all along: not as a ruler or a sister, but as a woman. She’s thought herself so clever, analyzing Daenerys’ motivations, noticing how she’s fussed over Ser Jorah, but Sansa realizes now that she has been willfully blind to her own feelings.

 _He doesn’t love Daenerys,_ she is convinced, one less dagger to her heart. 

_It doesn’t matter._ There has never been a moment in time where it could have been between them, if she’d just realized sooner. Until so recently, they both thought he was her brother. By the time they realized otherwise, he had promised himself to Daenerys in one form or another, and even if he had not. _The world can never know he isn’t father’s illegitimate son so he will always be my brother in their eyes._

Jon might love her back. Sansa is believes that is what he was telling her when he talked about crowning her Queen of Love and Beauty, not so much from his words as the expression that accompanied them. If she didn’t think as much, Sansa knows she would not have had the bravery to own her own feelings when it comes to him.

But whatever he feels for her, it cannot undo the truth: an impossible barrier lies between them.

Brienne had asked her, a few weeks before, whether she would marry again, and Sansa knows now that there is one man in the world she would wed with joy, but she can never have him as a husband.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon Snow wrestles with his feelings, as he is surprised multiple times on the night of Daenerys' coronation in King's Landing.

The spectacle of Daenerys having Drogon melt down the Iron Throne will long be talked of, not just by those privileged enough to be here for it, but by the common folk for hundreds of years. Jon has never met someone more committed to her aims. She will be a good queen. She belongs here.

He, on the other hand, feels completely not at home. It is Jon’s first time in King’s Landing, but already he understands why Sansa had not wanted to return. It is so loud here, the constant bustle of people everywhere without a moment’s peace. Sansa, at least, has the choice to go home after this is all over. 

He watches her converse with Daenerys, relieved that the two of them seem to have buried the hatchet. The two women are like inverted images of one another: Sansa’s hair red like the queen’s gown and Sansa’s gown a silver sort of grey that is reminiscent of Danerys’ hair. 

He sees Sansa walk away from the queen, and thinks of the lock of auburn hair he has kept safe with him. He’s still not sure what she meant by it, if anything other than a lark, but it means something to him, something desperate and foolish.

“You want to go back north with her,” Daenerys seems to read his thoughts.

“I promised to stay by your side,” he tells her dutifully. 

It doesn’t matter what he might want. He gave his word and he knows he’s too much of a potential threat to Daenerys’ throne to be allowed to go back to Winterfell, even if as the days go by he becomes more and more convinced that the queen is not going to take him up on his offer to wed her.

“That isn’t what I asked, Jon Snow,” she says as if she truly wants to know his answer.

He has not done right be Daenerys, in his heart. Outwardly, he has done his best, but she deserves better than his wooden chivalry. He ought to be in love with her. For a brief shining moment there he thought he was. But then they got back to Winterfell and everything got more complicated, with her and Sansa at each other’s throats and then the news about his true parentage.

The least he can do is not lie to her.

“Yes, your Grace,” he admits bashfully, “My heart belongs to the North.”

_With Sansa_. He’d known Sansa was precious to him when she’d thrown herself into his arms after escaping Bolton’s bastard. He’d known it when they’d named him King in the North and every time she disagreed with him it pierced him as sharply as the knives in his back at Castle Black had. 

She was his sister, he’d reasoned, and for the first time in their lives she wanted to see herself as such. But then Arya was home when he returned and he was overjoyed to see her, the sister who had always embraced him as such. It was so markedly different, though, than the turmoil in his breast when he thought about Sansa. _Of course it is different_ , he’d told himself, you have always been at ease with Arya.

But then Sam and Bran had told him the truth, that his trueborn siblings were instead his cousins, that Daenerys was his aunt and the truth is that the latter hadn’t so much disgusted him as made him realize something else. 

He is hopelessly in love with Sansa Stark, a thought he could not have brought himself to think openly while she was his half sister, but that is indisputable now that he is her cousin and the woman he had tried to bury his feelings for her with is his aunt.

He wonders if Daenerys can tell, whether he is endangering Sansa with the transparency of his longing. 

“Then go,” she tells him with a gentleness he no more expected than her freeing him in this way. “Go home with my blessing.”

“You would let me go, despite your fears about my parentage being exposed and fermenting rebellion?”

He can hardly believe her words, as welcome as they are.

“Lady Sansa knows that all hopes for northern sovereignty rest on that secret remaining hidden. I trust her to keep anyone who would unearth it in line,” she tells him with conviction.

“You are sure, my queen?” Jon he asks one final time.

“I am,” she assures him and he can no longer resist giving in to the urgency of needing to tell Sansa.

He scans the room for her, weaving through the crowd towards the sight of her hair, only to see, as he approaches closer that she smiling as she converses with that insufferable cousin of hers, little Lord Robert Arryn.

The Lord Paramount of the Vale, such as he is, has been constantly at Sansa’s heels since they arrived in King’s Landing. A spoiled boy, as useless as Joffrey Baratheon had been, and just as prone to sulking. 

“Jon…” Sansa’s smile brightens, though, when she spots him at last.

“Sansa,” he closes the distance between them, placing his hands on her shoulders as he cannot wait to tell her, “She’s let me go. Can you believe it? I’m free to go back North with you.”

Sansa flings her arms around his neck, her cheek pressed against his as she embraces him tightly. 

“Can it be?” she murmurs, “Can I be so lucky?”

“It is. I am that lucky it seems.”

He wants to kneel down before her right here in the middle of the crowd and pledge his devotion to her, but he knows he cannot, whatever his stupid stubborn heart wishes to believe. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself, not when she is so clearly overjoyed for him to be returned to her. Soon they will be home and now at least he can be near her always.

He wonders how obvious his feelings are to Sansa, who frequently sees far more than everyone else. Does she know that he feels for her in a way that is not that of a brother, of a kinsman, or if she did would she cease to feel at ease with him, cease to trust him?

“That’s strange,” Sansa says suddenly, pulling back from their embrace slightly with furrowed eyebrows.

“What?” he asks, suddenly very worried he’s offended her somehow.

“Over there,” she says, pointing behind him. He turns his head to look and he can see Daenerys exiting the former throne room, Ser Jorah by her side as usual, but it is hard for him to even think about, with Sansa so close.

“I don’t think she likes crowds,” he offers. “I can hardly blame her, with the mad press of people here.”

“I’m sure that’s it,” Sansa smiles slyly, like she knows something he doesn’t. Of course, she usually seems to know a great many things he doesn’t, so that’s not surprising.

“Are you going to tell me what you’re thinking?” Jon asks, “Or should I make a fool of myself trying to guess?”

“I don’t suppose it matters,” Sansa replies, “not now when she’s released you to come home.”

“Snow,” the Arryn boy interjects, “If you’ll excuse us, Lady Stark owes me a dance.”

Jon hadn’t even noticed that the band had started playing, but now he perceives that couples have begun to move to the center of the hall. A wave of resentment washes over him for the youth before him, but he swallows it down, just barely, not wanting to upset Sansa by quarreling with her cousin.

He watches them depart, a high lord and a high lady, elegant and stylish, and feels his blood boil.

“He’s barely more than a child, a fledgling if you will,” Ser Jaime Lannister surprises Jon by commenting. Jon hadn’t even noticed his approach.

“What?” Jon is taken aback.

“Young Lord Arryn there, he’s barely out of the nest. You’re a veritable war hero.”

Jon’s hackles rise at Jaime’s presumption, the sense of being exposed, that his jealousy is so easy for someone who barely knows him to see.

“I don't… What are you driving at Lannister?”

“Nothing of consequence, perhaps. Only that your sister has always been a courteous creature, prettily spoken, but rarely effusive after mine got her hands on her. And yet she seems rather otherwise with you, is not that marvellously interesting?”

“So help me, if you even look at her wrong-” he begins, without meaning to, his voice a low snarl. 

Ser Jaime looks amused at this, shaking his head as if he wants to laugh.

“No need to worry about me, Snow,” Jaime winks at him. “I swore a vow to her lady mother, more importantly my lady wife swore a vow to both Lady Sansa’s mother and Sansa herself. I mean neither of you any harm.”

“Then why…”

“I recognized that look on your face from my own in too many mirrors over the years. No matter, I had better go rescue Brienne from my relations.”

And with that he departs, leaving Jon feeling exposed and more confused than before. Surely the Kingslayer couldn’t know, couldn’t think… No. It was impossible.

Sansa returns eventually, young Arryn in tow much to Jon’s displeasure, forcing him to at least take a break from dwelling on the matter.

“Sweetrobin, be a dear and get me some wine,” she smiles exaggeratedly at the boy and he hastens off to do so.

The nickname galls Jon. Robert Arryn may be little more than a boy, but he’s eager to please, and maybe… after Ramsay, that youth and innocence might seem less threatening to Sansa than something else. Jon can’t help wondering. She will have to wed someone, someday, and her cousin is one of the few in Westeros who could be considered an equal match to her. As far as the world knows Jon is just her bastard half brother. 

“Do you suppose that since the queen already departed, that means we can too?” she sighs the moment Arryn is out of sight, sounding tired, though the moment before she’d seemed cheerful and lively.

“And leave Lord Arryn without a dance partner?” he remarks.

“Jon…” she rolls her eyes, “Be nice. I taught poor Sweetrobin to dance after his mother died. You don’t know how far he’s come from…”

“From what?” he asks.

“Nevermind,” she tells him. “Let’s just go, Jon. Walk me back to my rooms, won’t you?”

“Of course,” he replies, placing his hand on her lower back to guide her carefully through the crowd.

“I can’t wait to be back home,” Sansa sighs, leaning closer towards him, and he promises himself he is never going to do anything to break her trust in him. “I was worried about leaving you behind, but now we can go home together and I’m just so relieved.”

“So am I,” he admits, “I don’t belong down here.”

“Leaving so fast, my lady cousin? I had an invitation I wanted to make.” 

They’ve barely made it a dozen yards down one of the Red Keep’s strange open walled walkways from the throne room, before Arryn comes hurrying up behind them.

“I am tired,” Sansa turns around to face him. “Forgive my hasty departure.”

“You really should be more careful of your company, my lady. Some might read entirely the wrong thing into your familiarity with your bastard brother.”

“Listen here, boy…” Jon can’t help himself, stepping between Sansa and Arryn. “Sansa is not yours to command and if you ever think about inpuigning her honor again-”

“Listen to yourself, Snow. You are far too forward. Baseborn though you are, surely you must understand the importance of a lady’s honor and how the company she keeps reflects it.”

“I’m not the one calling it into question.”

“No, but you are the one jepordizing it.”

Jon doesn’t even realize he is lunging for Arryn’s throat until he has him dangled halfway off the walkway.

“You are jeopardizing your life, Lord Arryn,” he growls, “Say one more word about Sansa and we’ll see how well Vale Falcons really fly.”

“Jon!” Sansa cries out, “What is _wrong_ with you? Pull him back to safety this instant or find somewhere else to go than Winterfell; because, I certainly won’t have you anywhere near me.”

Shaking himself out of his fury, Jon pulls Arryn back to solid ground, releasing his grip on his throat. The boy stumbles away coughing and clutching his neck.

“Come Sansa,” he stammers, “I’ll see you safely away from this beast.”

“I’m so angry with both of you I can barely speak,” Sansa seethes, “I don’t need your protection from one another. Honestly, both of you disappoint me.” 

She walks away, leaving them both speechless. Arryn gives him a nasty look and scampers off. 

Jon feels bereft, all the giddiness of his earlier exhilaration has vanished and he has no idea how he is going to make this right. He’s not sure which is worse, that Sansa is angry with him, or that she is upset with him because he threatened Arryn.

He wants to go to her, beg her forgiveness, but he remembers her telling him to give Daenerys space. Should he assume that advice applies to dealing with her as well? He walks aimlessly, not sure where he is headed, until he ends up near the kitchens.

“Lord Snow,” a surprised serving girl nearly drops her trays, “What are you doing down here?”

“Oh ummm…” He has an idea suddenly. “I don’t suppose there are any lemoncakes to be had?”

“I think there are still some left from the feast, milord…” the girl stammers.

“Oh good. I need a tray of them sent up to Lady Stark’s rooms and- here...” He fumbles through his pockets for a quill and parchment, fingers running over that ring of Sansa’s hair as he does, and hastily scribbles a note. “Put that on the tray with it.”

“Very good,” the girl curtsies.

Jon doesn’t want to go back to the celebration, nor does he think he could go to bed. He vaguely remembers Sansa mentioning that there is a Godswood here, that it brought her a sliver of solace during her time as a hostage in King’s Landing. He stops the next servant he sees and asks for directions.

The Godswood here is smaller than the one back at Winterfell, but it is an oasis from the din of King’s Landing and the Red Keep. Jon kneels before the Hearttree and knows he should be thankful for everything, for their victory against the Night King, for the Red Woman raising him from the dead, for Daenerys giving him his freedom, for Sansa and Arya and Bran being alive.

Instead he wants to scream at the gods for once again leaving him in a situation where his heart and his honor are at odds, where nothing he does can please everyone. He’s not really angry at Robert Arryn, he knows, spoiled and insufferable as the boy is. He’s angry that Arryn can court Sansa if he so chooses; because, everyone knows he’s trueborn and a high lord and her cousin and not her brother. 

Sansa knows now, that Jon has secretly been true born all along, royalty, her cousin and not her bastard half-brother. Jon had almost imagined that she might possibly harbor some soft feelings for him, but even if she did… it comes to nothing as the truth about his parentage must remain secret for the good of the Seven Kingdoms, for all their safety.

Now it probably wouldn’t matter either way, not with the look she’d given him when he’d attacked her precious “Sweetrobin”.

“Jon?” Sansa sounds surprised, and Jon hesitates before he turns around to face her.

“I’ll go,” he offers, “I know you don’t want to see me, right now. For what it’s worth, I am sorry.”

“I still don’t know what you were thinking,” she shakes her head, but she looks more melancholy that angry. “Do you have any idea how his mother died?”

“Your aunt Lysa?” he’s a bit confused how she could have anything to do with this.

“Littlefinger pushed her out the Moon Door at the Eyrie and blamed it on Moon Boy… right after she nearly did the same to me.”

“She... what?” he sputtered.

“She was convinced I was trying to steal Lord Baelish from her. She was not right in the head.”

“So when I threatened your cousin…” he realizes.

“Do you want to be like her? Or like Littlefinger?” she demands.

“Gods no…” he insists. “I just couldn’t stand him saying those things-”

“Jon,” she sighs, taking his hand in hers, “You can’t attack and threaten every man or boy who talks to or about me.”

“I don’t-”

“You do,” she interrupts, but not unkindly.

She doesn’t seem angry with him anymore, just sad. He doesn’t want to be the cause of her sadness. 

“I’m sorry. I know you care about him and I shouldn’t have presumed. I just… I never wanted to be in line for the throne and I’m relieved to get to go home, but sometimes I can’t help thinking about the fact that one day you are going to marry someone, like Robert Arryn, and I want you to be happy and you deserve to have a husband who dotes on you but…”

“But what?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he stops himself, realizing suddenly what he’s saying, what he’s sworn to himself he would not say to her.

“Clearly it does,” she replies

“I don’t want to ruin things between us, Sansa. You’re too important to me,” he entreats her to let it go, while at the same time wishing she wouldn’t, that he could tell her all the things in his heart.

“You’re important to me too, Jon. I thought you knew that. You have no idea how mad I’ve been driving myself these past couple months, wondering what Daenerys’ intention were with you, wondering what you really wanted… I told myself I just wanted to help you whatever that was but…”

She seems to realize she’s been rambling now, and Jon is left hanging, wondering if he can possibly be hearing what he suspects he is.

“But what?” he asks softly, not wanting to startle her back into her shell.

“I didn’t want to give you up to her,” Sansa confesses and his heart swells, even as he tells himself she can’t mean it the way he wants to imagine she could.

“Let’s not fight then, Sansa. I’ll be better. I promise,” he offers, reaching out to caress her cheek, brushing a loose strand of hair from her face.

He will. He will be grateful for whatever it is that she feels about him. He will control his temper so he doesn’t scare her. He will be more worthy of the care she bestows upon him. 

“Jon. When you said that you would crown me Queen of Love and Beauty…” 

He knows what she’s asking and he can’t lie to her. There are already too many lies in the world, too many lies that have lain between then.

“I was telling the truth. I realize that’s probably not what you want to hear and I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable, but it’s the truth,” he confesses, trying to prepare himself for the look of horror on her face.

It doesn’t emerge, instead she slowly smiles and asks, “Did I seem uncomfortable when I gave you a lock of my hair?”

“Come to think of it… no.” he realizes, thinking of how the gesture took him by surprise.

“I don’t have any intention of marrying Sweetrobin, Jon. I never did,” she says with a solid conviction.

“Sansa…” he can barely breathe. Can she really be saying what it feels like she is about to? 

“I know the rest of the world thinks you’re my brother, but I know you’re not, and I find it is a relief. It’s a relief because I love you and not in the way a sister ought to love her brother,” Sansa tells him, pulling away at whatever ambiguity still lies between them.

“Do you mean that… can you really-” he says in shocked disbelief. 

She takes his face in hands and kisses him, not with a chaste press of her lips or a tentatieve brush, but like she wants to swallow him. Jon knows he shouldn’t, they shouldn’t, but he’s daydreamed so hopelessly of her and now here she is, claiming to love him, kissing him like she wants him. He kisses her back, letting her back him against the trunk of the Heartree.

“Jon,” she murmurs, pressing her forehead to his, “Jon.”

“Sansa,” he breathes, reaching his hand out to cup the side of her face, “Gods, I tried so hard not to, but I love you, desperately.”

“It’s so unfair,” she says with tears in her eyes, “After everything the one promise we made to **her** makes this so complicated.”

“What can I do?” he asks, nuzzling his face into her beautiful hair as he whispers against the shell of her ear. “Tell me what I can do to make this easier on you and I will… even if that means going away.”

“Don’t say that!” he can feel her almost sob. “Don’t leave me… never leave me.”

“I won’t,” he promises, “I’ll never leave unless you ask me to.”

“I know…” she swallows. “I know we can never wed, never have the life together I wish we could, but do you think… just this once, before we leave this place and go home… I want to know what it feels like to be loved.”

“Sansa… are you saying what I think you are?”

“Walk me back to my rooms, Jon. Escort me back to my rooms and stay with me, tonight. I’m a woman bespoiled, twice wed, widowed, and yet, I’ve never know what a lover’s embrace feels like. I want to know. I want to know what it is like to be with you.”

He cannot find the words to express what he feels, so he kisses her instead.

“You could never be spoiled,” he whispers. “Don’t ever think that.”

It takes them a moment to pull apart, Sansa smoothing her hair, before they head back. Jon is all to conscious of how close he is or is not walking to her now, though earlier he hadn’t given a second thought to putting his hand on her back and leaning in.

He can’t believe this is really happening, that Sansa knows and she isn’t off put, that instead she apparently loves him, wants him. It seems impossible and Jon knows he should be thinking about the impossibilities of the future, but instead all he can think of is the wonder that Sansa could kiss him like she just has, would invite him into her bed.

“You’re sure?” he asks, as Sansa opens the door to her chamber, and she gives him this look like he’s just said the stupidest thing in the world, and for the first time he doesn’t hate being on the receiving end of that look.

He steps inside and Sansa reaches to bolt the door behind him, and for a moment he’s not sure what he should to first or next. 

It’s not like this is his first time, but it is hers in a way, and that is new for him, and he doesn’t want to cock this up, not with Sansa, not after everything.

“I won’t break,” Sansa tells him, and Jon remembers Ygritte and the way she’d mocked him for imagining women as these fragile creatures and how he’d thought she was so different from Sansa and she was but… maybe not in some of the ways he’d imagined.

He reaches out for her, his hand around her waist and draws her to him, kissing her again. That much he thinks they are already figuring out pretty well. Her hands grab the front of his shirt, gently tugging him closer. His mouth travels to her neck, kissing that slender white column. 

“Gods, you’re beautiful”, he says, knowing it is unimaginative but feeling that it needs to be said anyway.

“Jon…” she blushes.

“You are,” he insists, taking her face in his hands and looking her directly in the eyes. “You’re the most beautiful woman in the world and if we’re doing this I ought to be able to tell you as much.”

She bites her lip and it’s such a familiar endearing movement, less the poised hardened Lady of Winterfell and more wide eyed innocent maiden.

“I used to daydream about someone saying that to me,” she admits.

“Anything else you daydreamed about?” he asks. “I mean other than lemoncakes.”

“The lemoncakes were a sweet gesture,” she blushes. “You’re sweet, Jon, for all your scowls.”

“I want to be sweet to you, Sansa,” he tells her. “I know I haven’t always been. My temper gets the better of me sometimes.”

“That’s sweet in its own way,” she smiles softly. 

He barely brushes her lips with his, hands moving into her hair, “I don’t want to frighten you,” he murmurs.

“You don’t,” she reassures him. “I’m not scared of you, only ever for you.”

He moves one hand around her back and the other just behind her legs as he lifts her off her feet, feeling her mold herself against him as he carries her towards the bed. He still can’t quite believe that he’s allowed to, that she wants him too.

Setting Sansa down as softly as he can. Jon sits down beside her and bends down to remove his boots. Sansa sits up and wraps her arms around him from behind, resting her head between his shoulder blades and her hands across his chest and it feels like she belongs there. 

She shifts and kisses the side of his neck as he straightens back up; her hands start unlacing his shirt, and it evokes a completely different emotion.

He turns around, kissing her throat as he gingerly takes her shoes off as well, fingertips caressing the arc of her feet and her narrow ankles. 

She keeps kissing his neck all the while, hands on his bare chest now that she’s gotten his shirt open and he feels that she wants him, but it is not a hard or rough or violent want, it’s something else, warm and liquid and different somehow.

He moves one hand back to her waist, as he guides her backwards down onto the bed, tracing the curve of her ribcage out to just beneath the swell of her breast, anchoring his other hand beside her head as he leans over her and kisses along her jawline to her lips again, feeling her sigh into his mouth as she pulls him down onto her.

“Jon…” she murmurs, turning her head sideways to give him better assess to her neck as she spreads her fingertips wide across his back. 

He loves hearing her say his name under any conditions, but like this: breathless and full of longing, it is intoxicating.

He sits up again, to remove his shirt as Sansa moves her hands up under the hem to find his bare skin, and her long slender fingers immediately go everywhere, mapping his shoulders and then down to his navel.

She comes up to meet him, kissing his lips as she curls her fingers into the top of his breeches.

He reaches around, trying blindly to sort out the clasps and laces and ties of her grown, without breaking or tangling anything.

“It’s alright if you just want to cut it,” she says quietly, twisting around so he can actually see what he’s doing, but there’s something small and tight about her voice when she says it that immediately gives him pause. 

“Sansa,” he urges her, “look at me.”

Her eyes are so bright and wide and he notices the little tremble as she does turn back to face him.

“I trust you,” she says, but he can see her lip quiver slightly.

“We don’t have to do this,” he tells her, gathering her hands up in his and bringing them to his lips. “You can bind up my hands and just do whatever you feel like or we can just lay here for now…. We don’t have to do whatever it is you feel like you are supposed to, or I expect. It thrills me that you want me, but only when what is happening is comprised of the bits you want.”

The idea of doing something to her she doesn’t want makes him feel sick in the pit of his stomach.

“I do want you,” she insists. “I want you to take my dress off too. There’s the ghost of bad memories, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it.”

“I don’t want to cut your dress,” he tells her, feeling it needs to be said. “I don’t want to skip the journey even if I have no idea how to go about it.”

“You unlace from the bottom up,” she tells him, “and then the clasps you unhook from the top down.”

She turns back around again, exposing her back to him, and he sweeps her hair over one shoulder, kissing the back of her neck along the spine before moving his hands to the base of her spine to find the ends of the laces and begin carefully pulling them free. 

When he gets to the top and begins uphooking, he moves to kiss the newly exposed skin, only to realize there is yet another layer. He supposes it should not be surprising that Sansa’s clothing is complex as she is.

“Regretting not taking the easy way out?” she asks, as though reading his mind.

“No,” he insists, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close against him, leaning forward so he can kiss her cheek.

She reaches back and strokes his hair as their faces rub together and she giggles slightly as his beard tickles her skin. This is how he wants to remember them together, open and affectionate and warm. This is how he imagines they could be if the world understood that they aren’t actually siblings.

“If I had imagined how this evening would end, I might have worn something a little less complex,” she laughs.

“It gives me more practice,” he tells her, despite the strong implication she gave him earlier that this wasn’t likely to be repeated, that tonight is an exception and not a new normal. He doesn’t want to think about that.

He releases her waist and goes back to undressing her carefully, peeling the outer layer of her grown down over her shoulders and arms and then identifying the seam of the next as being in the front and crawling around to kneel in front of her.

The lacing starts just under her breasts, the outline of which he can vaguely see through the thin material of her shift and he can’t resist placing his hands over them, cupping gently, feeling their weight in his hands and watching the catch in her breath as he ever so slightly rubs his hands over them through the material.

The way she flushes is a memory he knows he will treasure forever.

She moves her own hands to the corset, moving much more quickly than he could have to unlace and put it aside. Jon lifts the heavy dress over her head and then she pulls the shift off and she’s there in only her smallclothes and he wants nothing more than to touch every inch of her.

She wraps her arms around his neck, while he’s still trying to decide where to start, and suddenly he’s tumbling down onto her, her bare breasts against his bare chest and her bare legs wrapping around his still clothed ones. 

Sansa almost seems to purr as he kisses just under her ear, hands moving back to her breasts so he can run his thumbs over her nipples. Her hands tangle in his hair and she arches up under him into the contact. 

Jon moves downwards with his mouth, kissing along her collarbone and and down the valley between her breasts, only to drag his tongue along the underside of each breast and then scatter light kisses across the tops of them. She squirms slightly under him, gasping as he moves to take one of her nipples in his mouth, and it is not a tense squirm of panic but a loose limbed one of enjoyment.

He keeps dragging his thumb over the other nipple as he alternates between doing the same with his tongue on the first and sucking at it, and Sansa lets out the most delightful little moan with the latter and pulls him closer to her breast. 

He sucks a little harder, ignoring the insistent press of his cock struggling against the fabric of his clothing as she continues to move her hips under his. 

Eventually he switches to the other side, but not until she’s breathless and properly writhing. He doesn’t want to rush this, not when there are so many ways he wants to make love to her, not knowing that no one’s ever loved her properly when she’s the most sweetest person he’s ever met, if in a subtle way.

At long last, he continues downward, kissing her stomach and across her hips and looking up to her face as he moves to remove her smallclothes in case she flinches, but she doesn’t and instead lifts her hips to help.

He caresses her smooth shapely thighs as he kisses the inner section of each, before properly burying his face between them, inhaling and then tasting her essence.

“Oh…” she gasps, and then lower, “Ohhhh!” 

Since she seemed to enjoy his sucking so much up above, he goes almost immediately for that below, capturing the gem of her womanhood between his lips and focusing single mindedly on discovering what she reacts most to.

Her hips press up into his mouth, thighs shaking a little, and he runs his fingertips up and down her legs as he pauses what he’s doing to lap up the unmistakable increase in moisture seeping from her. 

He wants to freeze this moment in his mind: Sansa with her head flung sideways into the pillow, hair spread out behind her, body arching off the bed towards him, peaked nipples almost as red as her hair with arousal. Him nestled between her legs, getting her to moan with every press of his tongue, the unique taste of her in his mouth. 

He licks her faster, moving back up from her opening to the heart above it and flicking his tongue back and forth more insistently, her hands in his hair clench, grabbing hold, though not painfully, and he sucks around her until he’s lightheaded. His vision blurs and he thinks he might faint, but at that moment her body stiffens and she shakes harder and then she lets out a soft sigh and relaxes back down against the bed.

“I don’t know what even came over me…” she declares, sounding and looking a bit stunned and more than a bit disoriented.

“You liked it though, right?” he entreats, staring up at her from his place between her thighs, despite the signals of her body.

“I did,” she blushes, and he drags himself up her body to kiss her gently, overcome with tenderness for the usually worldly Sansa so disoriented by her own body’s pleasure. “It is just all so new and I had no idea.”

“You never ummm…” He doesn’t know how to say it in a genteel way, and he doesn’t want to be crass with her. But it really sounds like she’s implied she hasn’t ever done any of it for herself, let alone had someone help her along, which he already had understood. “Never tested your own ummm… reactions?”

“I mean I…” she blushes now, despite the position they are already in. “I thought about it, but I never had the nerve to do much beyond that.”

“Oh Sansa,” he murmurs, pressing his forehead to hers. “Gods… I can’t believe I get to be the one who-”

She cuts him off with another kiss, moving her hands to his breeches once more, running them down his thighs, tracing the outline of his cock straining against the material with one, as the other moves to unlace them.

“I’m so glad it’s you,” she tells him. “I’m sorry I’m not… pure for you but-”

“Not pure?” he can’t help interrupting, stilling her hands and sitting up. “Sansa you are pure as fresh fallen snow as far as I can see, not that I would give a damn if you weren’t, but here you are telling me you’ve never even pleasured yourself and that just now was the first time you ever peaked, and then you are going to talk about being impure.”

“What Ramsay did to me-” 

She sits up too, crossing her arms over her breasts, looking humiliated, and he can’t help pulling her to his chest and holding her close.

“I wish every day I could have prevented, but it doesn’t change who you are… except in that he hurt you and I hate that anyone hurt you.”

He doesn’t want to bring up other women, serious intense Daenerys or fierce laughing Ygritte. Neither of them had concerned themselves with notions like innocence and he both wishes Sansa wouldn’t and wants to express to her that she is at the same time. 

“Sometimes I feel like such a fool for caring,” she admits, “And others I can’t help doing so.”

“I wish I could make it better for you,” he tells her, because he does.

“You do,” she promises him, pulling back enough to look him in the eyes. “Even though I know that we can’t stay like this, the very idea that you could be near, could be at Winterfell with me, made me feel safe enough to risk this, to open myself up to you… because you do make it better.”

He wants to tell her they can run away, go North of the Wall or across the Narrow Sea, and live together as man and woman where no one cares who they are. It’s an impossible impractical dream. He knows that. He still wishes it were not.

“The one thing about learning the truth about my parents that has been any good, is that it made me feel less twisted up inside about how I feel about you,” he tells her instead. “It tried so hard to tell myself I was just overjoyed to be reunited with my sister, but I was already in love with you then, just running from the truth, trying to convince myself otherwise.”

“It was the same thing when I took every excuse to find fault with Daenerys. I told myself I was looking out for you, and maybe in some ways that was true, but even before I knew you weren’t my brother I couldn’t stand the thought of her having you, of you loving her.”

He’d wondered, maybe secretly enjoyed the idea, but it was different to hear her say it. Jon hated that he’d caused Sansa grief and yet it thrilled him to know she cared so passionately about him.

“The moment I found out she was my aunt I couldn’t muster up any sort of passion for her that way anymore, and I thought it was about that… but it wasn’t exactly: the truth is that the moment you weren’t more related to me than she was, I realized I’d flung myself at the wrong relation.”

She wraps her arms around his neck and her tongue wipes across her lips and he gives in to the urge to kiss her again, and her hands hold his hips and he splays one hand across her back and puts the other in her hair, and it doesn’t take long for his cock to stir with renewed vigor despite the interruption.

“Sansa…” he groans, as she moves one hand inward along his hipbone and then further inside his unlaced trousers and reaches his cock. 

“This shouldn’t just be about me,” Sansa tells him, and he loves her all the more for it and at the same time wonders if he should stop her.

“I don’t want you to feel like you have to do anything you don’t actually feel like,” he manages.

“I want to,” she swears. “It’s what I was thinking about when I asked you to escort me from the throne room, before we got into that quarrel.”

“You were?” he’s honestly shocked to discover. While he’d been fretting about foolish little Lord Arryn, apparently he’d completely missed that Sansa had something very different in mind.

“That’s why I was so anxious to leave,” she insists, fondling him more noticeably now, “I’d been wrestling with the hopelessness of the situation since the night of Brienne and Jaime’s wedding.”

“I think he suspects,” Jon can’t stop himself from saying, despite how much he wants her to keep doing what she’s doing.

“Who suspects?” she looks confused. As predicted her hand stops moving.

“Jaime,” he clarifies, “He made some comments while you were dancing with Arryn. Claims he means us no ill, but I guess you probably should know.”

“I suppose we haven’t been as subtle as either of us might have believed,” she sighs, “Though perhaps he’s specifically qualified to read into actions of supposed siblings in that manner.”

“He also has a history of keeping secrets,” Jon offers.

“Let’s not worry about him right now,” Sansa suggests. “That’s a problem for tomorrow. Just this one night I don’t want to worry about any of it.”

“I’m not going to argue with that,” Jon agrees.

“Kiss me again,” she invites him, “And let’s finish undressing you.”

So he does and they do. Sansa gazes up at him from where she’s reclined on her elbows on the bed: legs apart, knees slightly lifted, lips parted, eyes heavy. He stares down at her: flushed and ripe and soft, and he aches.

She takes his hands and invites him down on top of her, his cock pressing against her thigh. She shifts slightly, and now he’s rubbing along the wetness of her.

He hesitates, for a moment, but then she’s kissing him again and one of her hands his on the back of his neck and the other is on his shoulder. Her fingers bite into his shoulder as she arches, and he is against her opening. 

He slides into her, moaning into her mouth as he is enveloped completely within her warmth. 

Everyone wants him to be something he isn’t, a king, a commander, but in this moment it is enough to be a man, a lover. That’s who he feels whole as, that’s the real him, as the world around them gets smaller and the only things that matter are the feeling of Sansa around him, the taste of her, the way she pulls him still closer.

Her legs wrap around his; her arms hold him tightly. 

“Jon…” she murmurs into his mouth with such soft delight, “Jon.”

“Sansa…” he whispers back, rocking in her, their whole bodies melted together. “Gods, Sansa…”

“I just want to stay here,” she breathes and he wants to ask her to run away with him, to tell her that they are each other’s home. 

“I’ve never wanted anything more,” he tells her instead, groaning as she squeezes more noticeably around him.

She smiles up at him and he kisses her again, grinding his hips into hers and feeling her start to meet his movement with her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One last chapter to go (which will be posted tomorrow). Hopefully you all will enjoy the way things get resolved.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sansa realizes exactly the weight of the situation she's put herself in. Fortunately a solution presents itself.

The knock on the door startles her out of a deep sleep. Sansa doesn’t even remember where she is for a moment, only that she’s never been more comfortable in her whole life. 

She opens her eyes and comes face to face with Jon’s sleeping face and… _Oh._

The memories of the night before come flooding back to her as she registers that yes that is his arm slung across her waist and the pleasant sort of ache of her body, different from other aches she finds. She recalls the sweet things he whispered in her ear as he made love to her, the joy of him deep within her: a welcome warmth not an invasion, the sounds that had escaped her lips. 

They’d only meant to rest for a little while, and yet she can see sunlight streaming in through the window. Now someone is at her door and Jon is still here, both of them dishevelled and smelling of one another.

“Who is it!” she calls out, her former contentment vanishing as panic surges through her. _Stupid Sansa_ , she thinks. _How could you be so careless?_

“Brienne, my lady,” is the response, and Sansa is grateful that at least it is Brienne who she trusts, who will protect her no matter how shocking this might be.

She sees Jon also blinking and visibly groggy. She nods in the direction of the privy, urging him to hide himself there, though there’s nothing to be done about the state of the room or her own person.

“Just a moment!” she calls out to Brienne, stumbling from the bed and reaching for a dressing gown as she watches Jon’s retreating form.

It is still all too evident that she’s had a man here, but she hopes that Brienne will choose not to comment on it. 

“I’m sorry to disturb you, Lady Sansa. I didn’t realize you’d still be abed…” Brienne begins to apologize as soon as Sansa unbars the door.

Sansa watches her take in the state of the room, the hastily strewn clothes, the twisted sheets… Sansa’s flushed cheeks.

“I appear to have overslept,” she says as if she didn’t notice Brienne’s realization.

“I can come back,” Brienne offers. “Perhaps we could talk over lunch.”

That might be best,” Sansa hastily agrees.

“That was close,” Jon comments, once the door is fastened behind Brienne once more.

He turns around to face him, standing there naked before her, strong and handsome and exposed. He makes no more to cover himself, to rush to dress and depart. 

“We were careless,” Sansa owns. “She definitely saw enough to know I had someone in here.”

“I didn’t mean to endanger your reputation,” Jon apologizes, looking down at the ground. 

“I believe it was my idea,” she tells him, crossing over to him and taking his face in her hands. “Gods I don’t want to send you away.”

“I don’t want to go,” he responds, kissing her deeply and wrapping his arms around her. 

She’d been a fool to think that once would be easier to handle than never. 

“Just a little longer,” she murmurs as they stumble backwards to the bed.

His hands move to her hips as he pulls her onto his lap, his mouth moving all over her neck and down to her breasts as her dressing gown falls open. 

She throws her head back with a groan, hands in his hair. 

She remembers how much she used to daydream about the idea of being kissed, daydreams that life stole from her, and recognizes that once again she’s going to be daydreaming from this point forward, now that the floodgates are open, though they won’t be innocent girlish daydreams of soft innocent excitement.

She feels him stir against her, as he continues lavishing her breasts with the full attention of his mouth and she knows they should separate, that she should send him back to his own rooms and clean herself up, but instead she rises up on her knees to reposition herself against him

“I don’t know how I’m going to go back to the way things were,” Sansa admits, as she lowers herself down onto him, taking him inside of her with a shudder. 

“It can be our secret,” he offers, untying her dressing gown and letting it fall off her shoulders and slip down her arms and back to pool around her on the bed. He moves one of his hands to her now bare back as their bodies kiss. 

“Secrets get out,” Sansa sighs, circling her hips. “Secrets get used against people.”

She wants to say yes, but she knows it is not wise. She also knows secrecy is not in Jon’s nature. _Father kept his secret,_ she argues with herself.

His lips close over one of her nipples and he feels so good against her, and she indulgences for just a moment in imagining starting every day like this: sunlight and Jon’s smile and the warmth he stirs up deep inside of her.

“Jon…” she gasps, as he pushes up into her. “I don’t want you to ever doubt my love, no matter what comes after this.”

“Don’t ask me to sit idly by when others wrong you,” he pleads, the morning sun seemingly having dispelled their ability to pretend like the future’s problems don’t exist.

“I love that you want to protect you,” she murmurs, raising his face from her breast to look into her eyes directly. “I want to protect you too, though, even if it’s not with physical force.”

“I know,” he groans, “I do know even if sometimes I lose track of it.”

Their mouths find one another and Sansa clings to his shoulders as they writhe together. He holds her close as she feels the need to crawl inside him, to erase all space between them. 

Clinging to him, her body answers questions she hadn’t known how to ask, shuddering and shaking and tensing and releasing, as all other thoughts are driven from her mind as ecstasy overtakes her..

Jon grabs hold of her more firmly, suddenly, flipping them over so he’s over her and hastily pulling away so he spills over her thighs instead of within her. 

_We can’t have the husbandless Lady of Winterfell with child can we?_ he’d grimaced, the night before, and she’d been touched by his thoughtfulness, as bold and brash as Jon could so often be.

She’d drawn him to her again and kissed him tenderly, until he’d slipped from her grasp and made his way back down her body.

Now, again, he lowers himself down to where his seed is splattered and dilligently licks each trail of it clean. He moves from there back to press a kiss just beyond the triangle of hair pointing between her thighs and she wants nothing more than to stay with him here in this bed. Why hadn’t she told Brienne tomorrow? 

“We have to go…” she groans, as his tongue circles against, creating eddies of sensation, anchored to her core.

“You want me to stop?” he asks, staring up at her from his position between her legs.

“No,” she admits. “I don’t want you to stop at all, but if I wait for that to happen I fear we shall never make it out of this bed.”

Getting out of this bed is not optional, she knows. No matter how much she longs to say there with his hands and mouth upon her, to feel his weight on her, to hold him closer than anyone has ever been held… this cannot go on forever.

She sits up and draws her body back from him, though her body screams in silent protest. 

Jon bites his lip and pushes himself up from his position lying on his belly, staring at her for a moment before turning and seeking out his clothes with slumped shoulders.

“There’s another solution,” he tells her as he’s getting dressed, “but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

“Why is that?” she asks.

“We could run away together. Go somewhere no one knows Lord Stark’s children, live as common folk and be together.”

“Jon…” her heart feels like it might burst. “We have responsibilities. I have responsibilities.”

“I know,” he sighs, pulling his shirt over his head. “I know, but I’d still do it in a heartbeat.”

She remembers not so long ago, when she doubted that anyone would give up their home and position and future for her. Looking in Jon’s eyes she knows he means what he’s saying, and a little part of her wishes she were still foolish enough to say yes.

_I ran away from King’s Landing and look where that got me,_ she reminds herself, though truly if she hadn’t she would probably be dead.

She watches him walk out the door and wants to weep. 

She cannot call him back, and yet she wishes she could. Part of her wishes that he would ignore her refusal: barge back into the room and demand she run away with him. 

Still she manages to dress and join Brienne for lunch in the courtyard, remembering sitting in this very spot with Margaery. 

_I knew nothing then,_ she thinks. Who was that innocent girl, easily lured in by a brightly colored flower, like any butterfly or hummingbird? She certainly isn’t the same person. 

“What was it you wanted to talk about?” Sansa asks the woman she’s come to think of as a friend, half terrified Brienne will bring up the situation of this morning and half itching for a reason to be forced to discuss it..

Not that she will. Brienne never pushes conversations Sansa makes any attempt to shut down.

“I think it is time for me to return to Tarth, as you offered me the liberty to do,” Brienne tells her. “Everyone is at peace, and I’d worried about leaving you alone with your brother staying down here but now I hear he’s going back north after all…”

“Brienne…” Sansa ventures, though it wounds her to realize it. “You don’t have to follow me anymore if I’ve lost your esteem.”

Surely that’s the real reason she’s mentioned Jon, even as obliquely as that. Brienne is honorable, she is a true knight after the fashion of those in songs and Sansa cannot expect her to follow her in dishonor.

“Oh. No, Lady Sansa,” Brienne seems to realize how she’s taken her words and looks embarrassed and horrified. “It’s not that I want to leave you, but I won’t be much use to you in the coming months you see, and that’s what I was going to explain this morning before-”

“Won’t be much use-” Suddenly it occurs to Sansa what Brienne, a recently married woman is talking about. “Oh. What wondrous news my friend.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Brienne blushes slightly. “I wouldn’t want you to think it was something else, though.”

Sansa thinks back on Jon’s precautions last night and this morning, wonders if she ought to make things more sure with moon tea or if procuring it is more of a chance of exposure. 

“I wouldn’t blame you if it was… if you did, Brienne.”

“Do you wish to speak of it, my lady… Sansa?” Brienne asks awkwardly, and Sansa is touched by the gesture.

“I should not burden you further,” she says, though she longs to speak to someone of what is in her heart.

She expects Brienne to accept the rebuff, as she always does, but then a look of determination crosses the other woman’s face.

“You keep calling us friends,” she tells Sansa, “And I’ve never felt entirely comfortable with it, not because I shouldn’t be honored, but because I feel ill equipped for such a friendship. But if we truly are friends, is it not my role to listen on such matters?”

“It’s an impossible situation,” Sansa feels the tears welling up in her eyes. “I’m foolish for risking my reputation as I did last night when there is no possible solution, no matter how my heart may want one. ”

“Don’t give up hope,” Brienne urges, “More far fetched dreams have becomes realities.”

“You do know who was in my rooms last night?” Sansa wonders, though Jon’s clothing had been clearly visible, obviously his.

“I do,” Brienne confirms.

“And yet, still you encourage me?” Sansa can hardly believe.

“When we were first acquainted, before we liked yet alone loved one another, Jaime told me something. He said he didn’t blame me for my feelings for Renly, who could never reciprocate them, or Renly for… well the way he was. He said: we don’t get to choose who we love, and at the time I thought that was just him excusing his own actions, but now I see that he was right.”

“I do love him. I told myself all kinds of lies, but the truth is that I have loved him for a good while, and the moment I realized he loved me I could no longer believe my own lies. Then Daenerys set him free and I just couldn’t not tell him, not when he was so miserable and glum about some stupid notion he had about me and Sweetrobin- And… gods other people probably can see it all too clearly but I thought I had myself under control before yesterday.” 

“If it helps, I didn’t know before. Jaime said something to me about it and I told him he was imagining things, the shadows of his own ghosts perhaps.”

“I suppose we’d better hope that more people are like you than your lord husband then,” Sansa exhales slowly, trying to quiet her emotions. “How are you so calm about this? I mean Jaime I can understand, but… There’s something I really must tell you, lest you think more ill of me even than I deserve.”

She knows that she shouldn’t tell Brienne about who Jon’s parents really are, but she can’t stand the thought that must think Sansa is in love with her own brother, no matter how understanding she is being about it: a consequence of Brienne’s own husband’s history she supposes.

“Oh?” Brienne asks, “What is that?”

“I must swear you to secrecy first. It’s not that I don’t trust you, but this could ruin far more than my life.”

“Whatever it is, I swear I will breathe no word of it.”

“Bran and Sam uncovered something… a secret my father kept from the time of Robert’s Rebellion until his death.”

“Jon’s mother?” Brienne guesses.

“Yes, but it’s more than that. You see, it turns out that he isn’t my father’s bastard son at all, but trueborn and the child of my Aunt Lyanna.”

“Why did your father say otherwise then? Why besmirch his honor?”

“Knowing what you do about Robert Baratheon, how do you think he would have reacted to learning that his stolen bride had died bringing Prince Rhaegar’s son into the world?”

“And now?” Brienne questions, “Surely if you love each other that secret could set you free from the secrecy and turmoil you are so evidently suffering. A cousin who happens to be a Targaryen prince would be a fine match for the Lady of Winterfell.”

“He’d be a threat to Daenerys’ crown, given his is the stronger claim. If people knew who he truly is there would be no way to keep the Targaryen Dynasty from being reborn through him.”

“What a cruel injustice,” Brienne replies sympathetically. “Who knows what may come though, things change. Not so long ago I never dreamed that I would be the object of any man’s tenderness, let alone Jaime’s.”

“People can never know about Jon,” Sansa sighs. “That is the price of this peace.”

As if summoned by their discussion, both of the men in question appear on the other side of the courtyard, walking towards them, along with Tyrion.

“Ser Brienne. Lady Stark,” Tyrion calls out jovially, “What a beautiful sunny day, despite the chill.”

Sansa thinks that Jon should stop staring at her or it won’t take someone with Jaime’s perspective to notice something is amiss, but then she considers that she is noticing it because she is doing the same. Will she truly be forced to send him away in order to rein herself in?

“What have you three been up to?” Sansa asks, “Nothing too scandalous I hope?”

“Now that you mention it.” Tyrion grins, as he walks up to their table and pours himself a glass of wine. “We were just discussing a rather interesting story I overheard in a tavern, out of a traveller from Dorne.”

“Oh?” Sansa feigns interest, hoping Tyrion’s love of storytelling will give her time to collect herself, as she attempts to school her face into a neutral expression and remember how she would usually act around Jon. 

It’s not easy, not when she keeps recalling the tenderness of his touch all over her body the night before, the sweet words he whispered for her alone.

“Yes. It seems that he had it out of an innkeeper’s wife on the way up. Apparently the woman was a serving girl at the Tower of Joy once upon a time, back when Prince Rhaegar held Lyanna Stark there.”

“Tyrion…” Brienne’s voice is a low warning. Sansa would be more worried about where this story was going, if she didn’t know that Tyrion already knows the truth about Jon and is committed to keeping that truth a secret for his queen.

“Now here’s the real interesting bit, and Jaime can vouch for this. Can’t you, brother?”

“It’s fine,” Jaime assures his wife, who still looks alarmed. 

Sansa loves her for that, for her unflagging protection and support. She’s going to miss Brienne, not simply because Brienne would kill and die for her, but as a companion and a comfort.

“So as I was saying, the real interesting bit is about Jaime’s hero: Ser Arthur Dayne, the Sword of Morning. You see, as Jaime never tires of telling anyone who will listen, Ser Arthur was the most gallant knight that ever lived… no offense my lady sister. Come to think of it, I haven’t heard him say that since he knighted you.”

“None taken,” Brienne replies curtly, but Sansa can see her struggling not to smile.

“Anyway. We all know that Rhaegar was seized by a passion for your Aunt Lyanna, Lady Sansa, elsewise we might not have had any of the wars of the past few decades, but Arthur, it seems, would not stand aside when Rhaegar might perhaps have overcome her by force, and Lyanna understandably fell in love with her noble protector, who in turn found himself faced with the terrible position of finding his Kingsguard vows as in opposition to his feelings for such a noble maid as his fealty to Rhaegar had been to his vows to protect the innocent.”

Sansa isn’t sure where Tyrion is going with this story, which she knows all too well is fabricated. She wonders what Jon thinks of this story, which paints his actual father as the villain of the piece, but she is also trying not to look at him too much.

“This sounds like someone was adapting an old song to a new set of characters,” she critiques, not wanting Tyrion to see how distracted she is.

“It is a classic tragedy, is it not? But here’s the intriguing part. According to this report, Ser Arthur tried to tell your lord father the truth of the situation, when he showed up to rescue his sister, but Lord Stark didn’t want to give him a chance to explain anything.”

“That does sound like Eddard Stark,” Jaime shrugs, “No offense to either of you.”

“Does this story have a point?” Sansa rolls her eyes, feigning more disinterest than she feels.

“I’m getting to it,” Tyrion rolls his back at her, taking another swig of his wine. “For you see, after he slew the Sword of Morning, your father rushed inside to find his sister, only to discover her calling for Ser Arthur, her lover, as she bled out on her birthing bed. Your noble father felt terrible for not listening to Arthur and he promised her he would raise their child as his own, telling no one their secret, lest King Robert’s jealous temper tempt him to do the babe harm. You see,” he turns to Jon, “The baby is meant to be you. Imagine. All these years everyone’s wondering who your mother is and then suddenly the answer is that your father is the Sword of Morning and your mother is Lyanna Stark, and you are a child of some grand tragic romance. It’s a marvelous tale.”

“It certainly is more exciting than the truth,” Jaime interjects. “And people love a good story. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one caught fire overnight, and before the snow thaws it’s taken for truth in all seven kingdoms.”

Jon is looking at them all like he’s not sure what he’s hearing, and Jaime and Tyrion seem all too pleased with themselves, and Sansa has no idea what to say or why.

“Jaime,” Brienne gets up and crosses to him, “You and I both promised to do Sansa no harm, and I can’t imagine that hearing these kind of rumors about her kin is anything less than disturbing for her. My apologies my lady. I’ll take my husband and his brother with me to look for ships we might take back to Tarth, and get them out of your way at the same time.”

Sansa watches Brienne hurry both Lannisters away in shocked silence, before finally turning to look directly at Jon, who breaks into laughter suddenly.

“I feel as though everyone else is in on some joke I don’t understand,” she tells him. “What was that about? Why are you laughing?”

“I think Jaime and Tyrion Lannister just decided to solve our problem for us,” Jon tells her. “They really are going to spread that story about Lyanna Stark and Arthur Dayne, and if enough people believe it then suddenly I am your cousin to them, but without in any way jeopardizing the throne and the peace.”

“And you’d be alright with that? With a lie? With the implication that your real father was a would be rapist?” she wonders. She knows finding out that father mislead them had wounded him. 

“I’m already living a lie,” he tells her. “What should I care if a dead man I never met’s name is sullied? Especially not, if it solves the greatest sadness remaining in my life. If the Lannister brothers want to enable us to be together, how could I be anything but grateful, Sansa?”

“But why?” Sansa can’t help asking, as much as the scenario that Jon is outlining would be a miracle. “Why would Jaime and Tyrion go to all the effort to spread such a rumor?”

Surely, such help cannot he hers, cannot be theirs, gifted upon them instead of fought bitterly for. No matter how desperately she wants something to be true, Sansa knows she must ask herself the true motivations of those who seem to offer something for nothing or very little. 

“Jaime said he saw himself in my eyes, yesterday, and I know Ser Brienne worries about you, and Tyrion has always done what he could for you, has he not?” 

It seems impossible. Sansa has learned so many times the hard lesson that people don’t just help you out of the good of their hearts, that they want something, that they’ll stab you in the back.

“It seems too good to be true,” she shakes her head.

She does trust Brienne though, and Jon. Tyrion has never gone out of his way to hurt her, and sometimes has done so to be kind. She knows that Jaime loves Brienne, so perhaps he is doing this for her.

“And if it’s not,” Jon asks, “If people are convinced, then will you have me? Will you take me as your husband, Sansa?”

This pulls her out of her own fears. She looks into Jon’s eyes and sees his worry, his uncertainty about his place in her heart, despite everything she has said and done. _He thinks I might be stalling; because, it gives me an excuse to avoid making good on the promises I’ve implied._ That she cannot stand, not when she can make it right.

“I already told you yes,” she promises, wanting to reassure him with a hundred kisses, but knowing this place is not as private as it may seem from prying eyes. “I already showed you the answer is yes. I yearn, most violently, to be free to prove as much to you until you believe it..”

She smiles at him and he at her and for a moment she dares to believe that perhaps it can all work out after all.

**Author's Note:**

> This got so long enough that I had to split it up in three chapters, but it's all written and I will be posting all of it over the next few days (one chapter a day).


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